Invincible
by AngelCeleste85
Summary: 2nd revision 24 Sep. Songfic (to the Pat Benetar song of the same name) - Christine has gone with Raoul, and Erik has gone right back around the bend. Will he finally be called to justice for the crimes he has committed? R for violence, angst and death.


Invincible by Deborah Rosen (AngelCeleste85)  
  
Disclaimer:  
  
I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera no matter how much I wish! The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Also, as this is another songfic (I did warn you I work heavily with them!), I should add that the rights to "Invincible" are not mine, they're Pat Benatar's. Good song.  
  
Blame:  
  
Put this one on my muse, I didn't ask to be plagued by these phic ideas! lol Not that I mind, I love writing angsty stories and this one promises to be more so than most!  
*****I'm adding this note about halfway through... I have no idea whatsoever what's gotten into me! Don't blame me, I swear it's not my fault!  
*****About 2/3's done and oh my *gods,* this is by far the creepiest story I've ever written...  
  
Spoilers: Just this: if you don't like angst, turn around NOW! Also if death scares you, because this is not pretty. I honestly have no idea where it's coming from!  
  
Other Notes:  
// Lyrics to "Invincible" by Pat Benetar //  
[[ Thoughts ]]  
*emphasis*  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Invincible  
by AngelCeleste85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"Christine... I love you..."  
  
Erik watched helplessly as she walked... away from him. He couldn't take his eyes off of her: her soft brown curls, the natural and unconscious sway of her hips as she walked, the way the wedding dress fit her perfectly.  
  
[[ How in hell's name did we wind up here? After all the blood, after all the despair, after all our music together and the joy it brought... ]]  
  
// This bloody road remains a mystery //  
  
[[ Christine... I'm so stupid... For once that damned pup that follows you around everywhere... for once he was right. I couldn't win your love, so I tried to force it... ]]  
  
[[ It wasn't me... I was... I was insane! ]]  
  
// This sudden darkness fills the air //  
  
[[ But you saved me from that darkness... why, Christine? Oh, my love, why did you not leave me to that madness?! ]]  
  
// What are we waiting for? //  
// Won't anybody help us? //  
  
[[You lifted my despair for a moment, you gave me hope so bright it burned me, burned inside me! And then you left with him... everything is so much darker for knowing the light you brought... such cruel kindness, such sweet cruelty! Christine! ]]  
  
// What are we waiting for? //  
  
The sounds of the approaching mob were getting closer. It was no longer merely a trick of the cavern tunnels echoing the angry shouts. The walls of one tunnel were starting to take on a flickering orange glow from the torches, he could hear distinct words now, could name the voices behind them. Some of the words made him flinch. It was nothing he had not heard before, he reminded himself. [[ Parisians. I do not understand this fascination Parisians seem to have with forming lynch mobs. ]]  
  
// We can't afford to be innocent //  
  
Slowly Erik straightened from his crouch by the well. It was here, he remembered, that they had shared so much joy... it was here that they had hurt each other so badly. He carried Christine's wedding veil in his arms as though he were cradling the woman herself in one of her faints.  
  
Something had been born inside him in those brief moments as they kissed, when liquid fire ran in his veins instead of blood and the feel of her arms around him made him feel as though he was burning to ashes where he stood. Something that was dying with every step he took away from the well towards the house.  
  
// Stand up and face the enemy //  
  
The mob was getting closer, not more than a few minutes away. He had to hurry.  
  
[[ I have nothing left to lose. ]]  
  
As gently as though it were Chrstine in his arms, he laid her veil down on the bed in the room that was exclusively hers.  
  
Swiftly now, and with the utmost of care, he sealed her room. He glided on silent cat's feet into his own bedroom, closed his coffin. He caressed the pipe organ once more, straightened the sheaves of loose music. He might never see this room again, this place that had been home to him for years. With all the love and care he could still muster within him, he laid his masterpiece on the organ: the blood-red cover of "Don Juan Triumphant" looked like it belonged there. A composer planning to return someday, and wanting the room to be in order for that return. [[ Madness, to think that. But then, I must be quite mad, for I have nothing left to lose! ]]  
  
"Masquerade..." he sang without thinking, his voice raw. "Paper faces on parade..." It seemed to be on an endless loop in his mind.  
  
He sealed off his room, snatched his cloak off of his black throne and the hat as well. Where was the mask - there on the table! He slipped the black silk strings over his head and settled the cloak over his shoulders. The fedora went on low, to hide the gleam of his white mask in the darkness. And something else...  
  
[[ I've made my peace with you, de Chagny. Take care of her for me now. ]]  
  
Blood had been spilled tonight already and more would be, before the Phantom of the Opera surrendered himself.  
  
Lives had been lost already, yet the toll would be yet higher for invading his home with murder in mind.  
  
// It's a do or die situation //  
  
He buried his heartache then, feeling for the first time his face locking into its chilling half-smile.  
  
[[ Hurry, Raoul. Take her far from here, far from me. Do not let her see how very right you were, what a monster I can truly be. Let her remember her fallen Angel of Music, let her remember the man who wore a mask and loved her. But run, run! and carry her to the world of light that is yours to share! Erik is dead, and only the Phantom lives in his body now. Run, you fool of a Viscount! Oh, you were right to take her from me, run and don't stop running! ]]  
  
The Phantom made sure to carefully hide the entrance to his home, then pulled the inky black fabric of his cloak around him like a burial shroud and climbed the inner casing to a hiding spot hollowed out of the metres- thick bricks just large enough to conceal him and high above the reach of the torchlight. He was none too soon, for the mob at that moment rushed around the last bend and into the cavern.  
  
// We will be invincible //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Raoul ran with Christine at his side as hard as they could. Behind them they could hear the sounds of the mob fading: ahead of them showed the gleam of moonlight at the Rue Scribe. On they ran, stumbling at every step as often as not as tears blurred what little sight was granted to them in this near-pitch darkness. Christine was gasping and sobbing, Raoul was panting for air, but when Christine stumbled and fell to her hands and knees heavily he didn't stop to think, only scooped her up in his arms and ran on.  
  
// This shattered dream you cannot justify //  
  
Behind them, still echoing after them - or did it echo only in their minds? - , they could both hear the man screaming as though he had ripped the soul from his body.  
  
"GO NOW AND LEAVE ME!"  
  
And, Raoul reflected later, perhaps he had.  
  
// We're gonna scream until we're satisified //  
  
At last he staggered out the Rue Scribe entrance. The hour was late, the street was deserted, except for a carriage moving at a jog-trot towards them. He sighed in relief to realize it was a hansom and laid Christine down just long enough to hail it. The driver started in surprise, but Raoul jumped in with Christine only a moment behind.  
  
"Drive," he said, "and keep driving."  
  
// What are we running for? //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The mob had found their ways around the lake, or over it. Some went through it. The Phantom sneered at the folly: the water was icy and the air wasn't much warmer or much dryer, there was a good chance of catching pneumonia. [[ Not that I really give a damn. ]]  
  
But as great as their fury had been while coming after him, it was nothing compared to the roar that reverberated in the cavern when they realized that their quarry had slipped the net. There were no other ways out of this cave that they knew about, though the Phantom knew more than a few. He knew more than a few of the fifty-odd people in the mob, as well.  
  
// We've got the right to be angry //  
// What are we running for? //  
  
The Phantom chose that moment to speak. "Masquerade..." he sang again, letting his angelic voice take on a colder, crueler, more sinister edge that caressed every spine like the edge of a razor-blade. The threat was clear in the sotto voce words.  
  
// When there's no where we can run to anymore? //  
  
"DAMN you, Opera Ghost!" yelled Firmin. The Phantom felt a flash of contemptuous amusement at the manager's appearance. Soaked through from his swim across the lake in his eagerness to cross, shivering in the cold, damp air, dirty from his landing on this side of the lake, his hair was worse than a rat's nest and he seemed about to have apoplexy, the masked man wondered absently if he had ever seen Firmin so disheveled or flustered before.  
  
// We can't afford to be innocent //  
  
The Phantom threw back his head in his hiding place and laughed, the sound colder than the air, seeming to even lower the temperature significantly as he glared at them out of his burning amber eyes. Many in the lynch mob froze at the sound of his voice and by the time he stopped they were shifting their feet nervously and looking in every direction. In here, there was no need for ventriloquist tricks. Not yet, anyway. "Paper faces on parade," he added in the same voice as before.  
  
"Where the hell is he?" Andre murmured to Firmin. It wasn't supposed to be overheard, but the Phantom heard it anyway.  
  
[[ Dejá vu all over again. Really, I'm starting to find myself insulted, you're never willing to give me credit where it's due... ]] Only that mocking laugh answered the managers, the laugh they all remembered too well from the disaster that had been "Il Muto."  
  
"Squeak up, you coward!" That was Carlotta. From the center of the group.  
  
// Stand up and face the enemy //  
  
Again he laughed, letting it echo cruelly in the air. "I, a coward, madame? Surely you jest. Fifty, against one poor Opera Ghost... I suppose I should be flattered, should I not? Tell me, what stopped you from bringing more? Surely not fear of one simple ghost... And a word of advice to you. Be careful what you say about squeaking, Madame Carlotta, I seem to recall all too well when it was croaking. Tell me, do you wish to name me that again?" Carlotta put a trembling hand to her throat and tried to back even further into the press of bodies. "Coward indeed. Behold! She is as silent as a mouse!"  
  
"Show yourself, monster!" yelled a voice the Phantom recognized as a stagehand from the back of the mob.  
  
The Phantom's smile was icy and fixed firmly on his face, but humor danced in his gleaming eyes as he sang in that soft, threatening sotto voce hiss, "Hide your face so the world will never find you..." [[ *Now* it's time for the tricks. ]] "You may wish to look in the mirror, dear sir. Just be careful. Treacherous things, mirrors are. But I'm here, monsieur, and so are you: did you not remember? This is my home, and you intrude." [[ My opera home, I might add... if I didn't have a taste for drama before, it's certainly in my blood now. I do believe I might have made any number of excellent villains... now is as good a time as any. There's nothing left for me to lose that I would want to keep. And I have never taken well to being named "monster." ]]  
  
// It's a do or die situation //  
  
He continued the dangerous whisper, darting it around the mob, herding them together like frightened sheep, playing on their emotions as skillfully as he had ever played the organ, thoroughly enjoying the ripples of fear that ran through the mob as his voice seemed to light on one shoulder and then another. [[ Almost, almost. Patience. ]]  
  
"Why so silent, good messieurs?" he challenged mockingly. [[ I can be infinitely patient when I want to be... as patient as a spider in her web. ]] He watched and listened as he spoke, weighing them, constantly measuring their various reactions, and fell silent. They were crowded together so tightly that here and there some of the ballet girls who had worked up their courage to come and fainted were held upright by the sheer press of bodies. Carlotta had to be nearly unable to breathe by now. When even the most stoic stagehands were starting to look wild-eyed...  
  
An unholy grin of delight spread over his hidden face as he got an idea. Childish, but it should prove to be amusing...  
  
"BOO!" he thundered, throwing his voice directly into the center of the group.  
  
As expected, several figures fell to the ground motionless as the tight ball of people exploded in every direction. The cavern erupted in a cacophany of terror and became noticeably dimmer as many of the torches were dropped to the lakeshores and went out.  
  
// We will be invincible //  
  
Into the chaos dropped the Phantom from his ledge, a now-silent black shadow scarcely noticeable against the walls of the cave. Silently the Punjab lasso snapped out and caught Firmin around the throat. A moment later, it caught that insolent stagehand, who started to scream before he died. The mob swung around with howls of glee, though their numbers were diminished slightly as evidenced by the frantic splashing of freezing swimmers.  
  
// And with the power of conviction //  
  
"I'm here, I'm here, the Angel of Death!" he cried out. He was not keeping track of the dead, his hands worked their gruesome job automatically. Suddenly the lasso tensed and then fell completely: some brave soul out there had a knife and had cut the deadly noose. "Two can play that game," he murmured, and drew a pair of gleaming knives from his belt. The Phantom looked around and met La Carlotta's eyes squarely: the diva's eyes went wide and she backed a step as he advanced on her.  
  
// There is no sacrifice //  
  
"You're mad!" she whispered. The Phantom smiled again.  
  
"Very likely, Madame le Crapaud. But there is not a great deal you can do to change that, is there?"  
  
// It's a do or die situation //  
// We will be Invincible //  
  
"STOP! STOP IT!" someone was shrieking. He recognized the voice as that of young Meg Giry a moment before a weight hurtled into his chest and knocked him flat. The impact was hard enough to stun him momentarily while he tried to catch his breath, allowing the little dancer the chance to back away from him. She moved slowly on her hands and knees, face twisted in pain.  
  
// Won't anybody help us? //  
// What are we running for? //  
// When there's nowhere, //  
  
He heard voices, sounding as though they were coming down a tunnel, as the mob closed in and he closed his eyes as the rain of blows began.  
  
// Nowhere we can run to anymore! //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
[[ So it's decided. They took long enough about it. I only hope that Christine and Raoul left France, she doesn't need to hear about what happened that night.... ]]  
  
// We can't afford to be innocent //  
  
[[ Am I mad? really and truly, at last? I know I was that night. Because the only ones I'm actually sorry about hurting that night are Meg and Christine. I enjoyed it. ]]  
  
[[ No... no more mad than I was in Persia... this time it was in self- defense and I did give them a chance to reconsider. They came to kill me. Looks like they'll get their way after all, if maybe not quite as they hoped. ]]  
  
Erik was chained to the wall in the dark, dank cell, standing with very little slack allowed. His clothes were ruined long since. Whether or not the news of what had transpired the night the mob had tried to kill him had reached Christine yet, the guards certainly knew and were taking no chances. [[ I'm just tired now. I don't want to live anymore, they kept me alive too damn long for the trial anyway. What a pig circus that was, I wonder why they bothered? ]]  
  
// Stand up and face the enemy //  
// It's a do or die situation //  
  
Erik considered that last terrible night at the Opera House Seven had died that night, not including Piangi, and another four were badly injured. Meg Giry was one of those injured and that he truly was sorry for: that was no way to repay the kindness that her mother had shown him. La Carlotta had quit the Opera: quit singing altogether, from the little he'd heard of the gossip among the guards. [[ Likely the only good thing that came out of that whole mess... No, the other good thing is that I can finally rest. ]]  
  
"I beg your pardon," said a crisp but quiet female voice outside. "May I speak with him?"  
  
[[Christine...]]  
  
No, the voice was wrong, dead wrong. He knew the voice, but it wasn't *her.* The rougher male voice that responded denied her entrance, and he heard her sigh. "Please give him this, then. I'm not trying to smuggle a weapon in, but I would like all of it delivered to him. He would appreciate it, I think."  
  
// We will be Invincible //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The door opened a little while later, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, to reveal a young, underfed guard bearing a small parcel in his hand. Outside he could hear drums. [[ Parisians always do seem to consider execution to be a public spectacle. ]] Inside his mind, he was already flinching from the jeers and names the crowd would hurl at him: they always had. [[ Caged once more, in the dungeon of my black despair... ]] he thought wryly, and the thought made him smile faintly. There could only be one reason for the priest's presence now, and so many guards. [[ So, it's finally time. They took long enough deciding it. ]]  
  
"The priest is outside, Monsieur le Gargoyle - " the guard said using the guardhouse nickname he'd acquired. He hadn't had his mask since the night of the mob and they'd all seen him. " - if you wish to speak to him. If not, this was delivered for you."  
  
Quickly enough the former Phantom was unlatched from the wall. Ruefully he rubbed his wrists and knelt to open the package, conscious that the guard at the door had a rifle trained on him at all times. Even the Phantom of the Opera would find it difficult to move faster than a bullet in these close confines and in this condition: the bruises were not even close to healed and several ribs had not been seen to properly. Too late now.  
  
The package bore the marks of twine, but that had been removed prior to delivery and only the paper was folded carelessly around it. [[ Smart boys. ]] He lifted a plain but clean white cotton shirt off the black trousers and polished leather shoes and stopped in stunned disbelief when he saw the white porcelain gleam. And beneath that, a very familiar golden ring.  
  
"Who brought this?"  
  
"A woman in a black dress. She said that it was something you would appreciate."  
  
[[ Giry. Bless you forever, Madame. ]]  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The priest had once half-heartedly offered him a chance for confession a few days ago and Erik had laughed him out of the cell block. "If God was going to show me mercy," he'd said, "he wouldn't have given me this face." But the laughter seemed hollow somehow, forced, belied by the deep sadness he glimpsed before the walls slid smoothly back into place.  
  
Erik's demeanor now struck the young priest in much the same way as he had felt the young lady's attitude change towards this... man... while he was led from his cell and down the hall. The parcel that the woman had brought had contained dress clothes, a small gold lady's ring and a white porcelain half-mask. It seemed odd, the inclusion of the ring, yet the Giry woman had been most insistent that the package get through to the onetime Phantom of the Opera.  
  
Never before had the priest heard anything but courtly words separated from insult by a thin veil of courtesy, or seen the proud shoulders anything less than stiff enough to make a soldier proud. The man's back was slumped a little now, and his face hidden by the expressionless half-mask. His white shirt and black pants, though well-fitted and lending an almost formal air to him, seemed incongruous with the story his body told. The dark eyes that had glanced at him seemed to lack their usual glow in the darkness somehow, and the tone of his voice was coolly dismissive: if the words themselves were not calculated to insult, the mannerisms behind them might well have been - except that there was no heat behind them. And there never had been, he realized, comparing this man to the stories he had heard of the terrible Opera Ghost and with his own past experiences with convicts sentenced to die.  
  
// And with the power of conviction //  
  
"Why the Opera House?" he asked the silent form at his side, carefully watching the exposed side of his face, as pale as the porcelain mask on the far side and usually just as expressionless, for signs of the man's fabled lightning temper.  
  
Erik only smiled faintly. "It just seemed appropriate. The story of my life seems much like an opera in and of itself." [[ Besides, I helped design and build it. Surely the years of shelter I took there would be a fair recompense for my time, my blood, my sweat and tears that went into building her... It seems the ending of that story will be just as dramatic as the rest. Very appropriate for the Opera Ghost. ]]  
  
They stood just outside the door that would take Erik the last few feet of his life when Erik paused. For a moment the dark eyes closed and the masked face bowed. [[ Are you surprised, Monsignor? Don't be, I have nothing to say to your God... but oh so much to say to Christine. Straighten up, Erik, eyes forward. They can't say anything I've not heard before, but I'll be damned if I let them see how tired I am... ]]  
  
The priest moved to touch his shoulder. A month ago, Erik would have reacted violently to any such attempt, but while the reaction was still swift he only turned and raised a cool, imperious brow. [[ They expect to see a monster. I will show them a human being. Perhaps someone there will see the difference. ]] "Rest assured, Monsignor, they will have a good show." [[ My last performance. ]]  
  
The door swung open.  
  
// There is no sacrifice //  
  
Erik mentally ripped several choice words in Farsi. [[ So many, just to watch a man die? No, to watch a monster die, an animal. And I thought bullfighting was barbaric. ]] The sheer irony and melodrama of the whole affair made him want to laugh and to weep and to vomit all at once.  
  
He closed his mind to the crowd, letting his world narrow to the next step before him. [[ One step, and another. Another. They are nothing, they know nothing. ]] With a guard at his back he mounted the side stairs of the gallows steadily and stepped onto the trapdoor. [[ All too appropriate, for 'the trap-door lover. Wouldn't the Shah laugh his Persian ass off about this? ]]  
  
Something was being pushed over his head - no. "No, Monsieur," he said quietly. [[ I have a mask already, thank you very much. ]] As the hangman stepped back and handed the black silk bag away to someone else, the roars of the crowd became louder. Erik stifled his sigh. [[ Always when I think I have learned something of the cruelties humans can inflict upon one another, I learn that there is something still greater. ]]  
  
Without really thinking about it he scanned the crowd. Not a soul he knew. [[ Alone in life, alone in death. Appropriate. But for once in my life, I wish to God someone had disposed of these damned theatrics here! ]]  
  
He froze, but not because the hangman was putting the noose around his neck: he barely noticed the coarse rope nestled under his left ear. There *was* someone he recognized. Leaning against a wall in the shadows, there was Nadir Khan, the Shah's daroga, with Darius at his left. To his right stood stiff Madame Giry. And there was Raoul, with his arm around the shoulders of...  
  
With his arm around Christine's shoulders.  
  
Fury washed over him and for a moment his eyes flashed, but he did not register the surprised reaction of the crowd. [[ How *dare* he bring her here!? How does he even *dare?!* ]] And as quickly as it had come, it was gone, leaving him drained of emotion.  
  
He listened to without hearing the hangman reading the formal language of his sentence. Nothing mattered now but Christine: he could feel his heart burning with a physical pain as he met her eyes. Pain and pity shone through.  
  
But not the love he had hoped to find.  
  
Shit.  
  
For a moment he felt a flash of anger - [[ I never asked for her pity or anyone else's, only her love! But from her, ]] he thought more calmly, [[ that is all I will ever get. ]] He shifted his hands, bound tightly behind him, felt the golden band on the smallest left finger: how to let her know that he understood?  
  
He nodded once, the motion all but imperceptible, never taking his eyes from hers for a moment and Christine lurched as if struck by lightning, spun to bury her eyes in Raoul's chest.  
  
[[Take care of her, you bastard. Take care of - ]]  
  
Behind him the hangman -  
  
[[ My Angel of Music - ]]  
  
- made a motion that Erik never saw...  
  
[[ My Angel of Death. ]]  
  
// It's a do or die situation //  
// We will be Invincible //  
  
~*~*~  
  
Fin 


End file.
